Saturday, December 10, 2011

or: the notes i took while reading "moneyball" as influenced by an absurd love of baseball, a bottle of wine, 2 boxes of crackers, edamame hummus and a smores ice cream sammich...

- how many times do the top 200 songs mention the word: love, money, girl/woman, blue, heart. you vs. i - average
- how many of these songs are in: C, G, E, etc. - average
- how many are sung by women vs. men
- how many are written by women vs. men
- how many are performed by men vs. women
- age of performers
- song length - radio edits?
- how many are one writer vs. a collaboration
- average song length
- how many songs are performed by those who didn't write it => warts
- what's the difference in the $$ made between songs performed by the songwriter vs. the song performed by another artist who didn't write the song
- what single is the hit for the artist? 1st, 2nd, 3rd?
- on what album is the hit? 1st, 2nd, 3rd?
- if there are multiple hits, how long and what happened in their lives between "hits"? marriage, kids, deaths, religion, losing religion?
- "harvard" is an idea/concept that people NOT from boston or the north east have regarding intelligence and/or success of which harvard reaps the financial and marketing benefits - how many students who attend harvard are actually from boston or the north east?
- trader joe's edamame hummus = explosively fantastic
- make a word cloud for lyrics in top songs
- **shrinks are on the field** people who are inherent counselors in the intrinsic parts of the process
- potential!! potential is what to see
- personality is necessary for performance
- moyers is my baseball boyfriend - he distorted the perception of the hitters => artists need to distort the perception of the listeners
- keep doing as you did before success - why should you change what works?
- when they KNOW they always hit the spot, when they HOPE they never do
- should i learn to play an instrument so i can use that and my physical stature to intimidate?
- buy "moneyball" for future reference
criteria for research:
- artist has been in the industry for a certain amount of time - 5 years?
- "in industry" begins with first recorded song = intent
- performer (whether songwriter as well or not) - plays instrument as well?
- is the songwriter also the performer?

snippets i tagged in the book:
- "since we're outsiders, since the players are going to put up walls to keep us out here, let us use our position as outsiders to what advantage we can."
- hypothesis about literature: if you write well enough about a single subject, even a subject as seemingly trivial as baseball statistics, you needn't write about anything else
- life with no money is filled with embarrassing little trade-offs
- the oakland a's are baseball's answer to the island of misfit toys
- he was one of those people whose personality was inextricable from his performance. no: whose personality was NECESSARY for his performance. the funny thing is that pro baseball took one look at that personality and decided it needed to be beaten out of him
- shopping spree rules:
1. no matter how successful you are, change is always good. there can never be a status quo. when you have no money you can't afford long-term solutions, only short-term ones. you have to always be upgrading [innovating]. otherwise you're fucked.
2. the day you say you have to do something, you're screwed. because you are going to make a bad deal. you can always recover from the player you didn't sign. you may never recover from the player you signed at the wrong price.
3. know exactly what every player in baseball [in our chosen field] is worth to you. you can put a dollar figure on it.
4. know exactly who you want and go after him. [never mind who they say they want to trade.]
5. every deal you do will be publicly scrutinized by subjective opinion... to do this well, you have to ignore the newspapers.